Product Description

Production of the Mariposa required an entire new shipyard to be built, to handle such a large hull. Between the cost of the yard and the amount of labor and materials required, it ended up costing about five times as much to build one Mariposa as it did a Pena destroyer. Several member nations of the Republic proposed an alternative, and constructed a prototype as a demonstration. The Arrano was built in three sections, each of which could be built in the same yards that built the Pena, and then connected. It ended up costing a little more than three times as much as one Pena-class - a savings of almost forty percent over the Mariposa.

It had one fatal flaw, however - the increased mass imposed a much greater strain on the hyperdrive coils and EMPulse thrusters. The Arrano prototype struggled to keep up with the older Halcyon cruisers, retired Khitaian vessels of a previous generation sold off as surplus.

In the end, the designers went with a rather simple fix. One of the largest portions of the Mariposa's cost was the large hyperdrive coils, a new design that strained the Republic's manufacturing capabilities. While enlarged EMPulse thrusters were well within their grasp, the FTL drives were to prove a sticking point. In the end the designers simply utilized four of the same coils used on the Pena-class. With this redesign the Arrano would be only a 25% savings over the Mariposa - and rather less fuel-efficient. The power systems were also strained during combat operations at high FTL speeds due to the quad hyperdrive system. The cost savings was still worth it in the end, however, and the Republic Defense Council ended up ordering eighteen Arranos and six Mariposas for the first production run.